Introduction 

Video 1 

Study 1: The Starting Position 

Study 2: The Pawns - Basic 

Study 3: Pawns - Special Moves 

Study 4: The Knights 

Study 5: The Bishops 

Study 6: The Rooks 

Study 7: The Queen 

Study 8: The King 

Study 9: Castling 

Study 10: Ranks, Files and Notation

Drill 1 

Drill 2 

Drill 3 

Drill 4 

Drill 5 

Quiz 1 

Quiz 2 

Quiz 3 

Quiz 4 

Quiz 5 

Chapter 1: The Basics

Study 1: Check 

Study 2: Checkmate (Back-Rank)

Study 3: Dual Piece Checkmate 

Video 2 

Study 4: Stalemate

Drill 1

Chapter 2: Checks, Checkmate and Stalemate

Study 1: The 10 Golden Moves (Diagram)

Study 2: The 10 Golden Moves in Practice 

Study 3: King's Pawn Openings

Drill 1: The Italian Opening 

Drill 2: 1. e4 vs The Sicilian Defense

Video 3 

Study 4: Queen's Pawn Openings

Drill 3: The London 

Drill 4: The Queen's Gambit 

Video 4 

Study 5: Black vs 1. e4 - The Italian And Sicilian Defense

Drill 5: Black vs The Italian Opening 

Drill 6: The Sicilian Defense

Study 6: The Caro-Kann Defense

Drill 7: The Caro-Kann Advanced Variation 

Drill 8: The Caro-Kann Exchange Variation 

Drill 9: The Caro-Kann, Classical Variation 

Video 5 

Study 7: Openings Against 1. d4 

Drill 10: The Queen's Gambit Declined 

Drill 11: The King's Indian Setup 

Video 6 

Study 8: The Scholar's Mate

Drill 12: Scholar's Mate - White's Mate in 4 

Drill 13: Scholar's Mate - Black's Best Defense

Chapter 3: Opening Basics

Study 1: The Fork 

Study 2: The Absolute Pin 

Study 3: The Skewer

Chapter 4: Tactics

GothamChess Chessboard

You may have noticed letters on the bottom of the board and numbers on the sides. 

This is because each square has a coordinate. The square e4 is highlighted in green. It's e4 because it's on the e-file and on the fourth rank.

Horizontal rows are called ranks. 

There is a green arrow going across the 1st rank.

Vertical columns are called files. 

There is a green arrow going up the b-file.

A pawn move is shown in chess notation as simply the square to which the pawn move. 

Pawn to e4 is written down as "e4".

And finally a pawn capture is shown with the letter file from which the pawn captures from, the x, and the final resting square of the pawn.

In this example, the knight comes to the center.

The moves are listed automatically when playing online. 

If you're playing on my GothamChess Board, you'll have to write the moves down!

The e-pawn takes the pawn on d5. This is written as exd5.

The knight is represented as "N". 

Knight to the c6-square is written down as Nc6.

A knight isn't represented by a K because the king is represented by a K.

Fortunately, it should be easy. 

Queen to f3 is Qf3.

Once you move away, the knight can capture. 

A capture is written down as the letter of the piece, and x to symbolize the capture, and the square on which the capture occurs.

The queen goes to e2. But notice the plus sign. 

The plus sign indicates a check or an attack on the king. We'll study these later.

Nxc4 means the knight has captured something that was on c4.

Black plays Be7 to block the check. 

We'll study the special moves soon. There are some more symbols we're missing, like the checkmate symbol (#), the ones for the special move of castling (0-0 and 0-0-0), and pawn promotion (e8=Q).

In Study 3 we saw how to annotate the special moves of the pawn. In study 9, castling, we were introduced to 0-0 and 0-0-0.

Qxc4. The queen captures what was once on c4.

Chapter 1, Lesson 12

Chapter 1, Lesson 12

GothamChess Chessboard